


Magicite Shards

by Lirillith



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Amnesia, Drabble, Drabble Collection, Families of Choice, Flying, Friendship, Magic, Marriage of Convenience, Mid-Canon, Mind Control, Multi, Non-Consensual Kissing, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-08-30
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:44:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/pseuds/Lirillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Final Fantasy VI drabbles written over about eight years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra

The magic comes naturally to her, naturally as fighting. Parry, slash, dodge, speak words she doesn’t even understand and toss flames like bright flowers from her palms. She never has to think.

Thinking always comes later.

The lamplight softens everything, conceals the rough edges. But those are the ones that interest her, the furrows and puckers and welts her fingers find when she bathes, the still-livid marks visible in daylight. She's beginning to fear what she might find, but she still wants to decipher the past mapped out in scars on her skin.

Her body remembers. She wishes she could.  



	2. Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar and Sabin

"Freedom..."

We both had the same thing in mind - leave the castle, taking no more than you can carry, and make a new life somewhere else.

But the kingdom would still be there. Dad meant for us to rule jointly. Sabin wanted us both to leave. The compromise was obvious.

The double-headed coin had been a gift from my fencing instructor. I'd come to treat it as a lucky charm.

Of course I would have liked freedom, but it wasn't a sacrifice. I knew if I left - alone, or with Sabin - I'd feel guilty. I could make sure he wouldn't.  



	3. Decadent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Setzer and Celes

She licked her fingers slowly, eyes closed to savor it, and Setzer couldn't make himself stop staring even when she opened her eyes and noticed him.

"What?" she asked, a touch defensive. "I can't be refined all the time. Especially not when eating Jidooran chocolates."

"I have no complaints," he assured her hastily. "Do that whenever you like."

She blinked, surprised, then shot him a look. "That legendary Jidooran decadence at work?"

"Watching a beautiful woman enjoy fine chocolate is just one of life's simple pleasures." Another look. He shrugged. "Decadence has its merits."

"It does make for superb truffles."  



	4. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra

Most of the survivors were gone by the time she got there, three days after the world ended. Eight children, orphaned in the chaos, were left, watched over by a couple of injured teenagers. She wasn't sure if her friends had survived, how to find them, what to do.

She stayed.

They needed her. She knew what it was to be afraid, to need comfort. Now she fought off monsters, soothed away nightmares, and hoped it was enough.

The first time she was called Mama, it was accidental. The fourth time wasn't, and her chest felt tight as she answered.  



	5. Slave Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra and Kefka

When he tells her to kneel, she obeys, her jaw clenched. He controls her will, not her consciousness. He tells her to follow him, and she trails exactly two steps behind him, out to the courtyard.

There are birds flying overhead. Her eyes stray to them, and he has an idea. "Kill those three," he says, pointing.

Her hands come together as she speaks the words. Flames engulf the pigeons in midair, and they tumble to the ground, balls of fire reeking of burned feathers and meat. "Good girl!" he cries, delighted. She's weeping silently.

He controls her. It's enough.


	6. Silence

"That wasn't on the map," Wedge says, as they survey the area from the crest of a hill.

"Narshe isn't far," Biggs notes. "They'd be able to hear the alarm."

"Girl," Wedge says. She raises her head, seeming to hear for the first time as he gives her the orders. Her suit lumbers into a jogging pace as she moves out.

When they catch up, the last of the watchtowers has collapsed. The bells, silenced, lie in the rubble; tendrils of smoke hang suspended in the cold twilight air. The only sound is the crunch of magitek feet on snow.  



	7. Leap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celes

She's been living a borrowed life.

She knew what treason meant. She'd acted on impulse, but once it was past she'd realized the implications. She never thought of flight; she could at least face death with honor, though there'd been little in the life she'd thrown away. She'd been prepared, if not resigned, until a rebel spy with a lockpick opened the door.

She would have died the next day.

Now she's the only one left. So she closes her eyes to the empty horizon, wraps her arms around herself like an embrace, and steps backward into the waiting nothingness.  



	8. Happiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra and Edgar

She didn't want to, but she couldn't help thinking of what Edgar offered as a deal.

Marriage. A home for herself and her children, and for him, a queen, someday an heir.

He was always a friend to her. He was awkward with them, but he liked the children, she could tell, and they liked him. He stopped propositioning other women when he started courting her, though he'd never stop flirting.

And he kept the wedding small at her request.

He wants her to love him. She thinks she will one day. She's carrying his child. They're happy. It's enough.


	9. Hidden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edgar and Celes

Edgar keeps the wrong side hidden.

He says "I wouldn't assume he's fallen for you," and she freezes with outrage. Only when she knows more of both Edgar and Locke does she realize he was trying to spare her the hurt that comes anyway.

Still irritable, with him and with the heat, she catches a coin he's idly flipping and then she looks at it. She has to drag the story from him, and he swears her to secrecy about a ten-year-old kindness. But he gives up the coin and his secret when she has need, and brushes off gratitude.


	10. Unsteady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra

I had a hard time staying upright as the airship banked and turned. I held onto the railing tightly, afraid I'd collapse if I let go.

I hadn't expected to survive. I was half-magic, and to kill Kefka we had to destroy magic at the source. My life seemed a small price to pay to make the world safe, until I felt my strength failing and realized I couldn't bear to let go.

I was happy just to be alive. It didn't seem right, at our moment of victory, to dwell on the feeling that part of me was missing.


	11. Celebration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Locke and Terra

Soot hangs in the air, and he still has the ancient palace's thousand-year-old dirt under his fingernails. While he's been living in the distant past, the world above has grown back into something like it once was. He hopes that includes hot running water in Figaro palace.

One of his friends is due to meet him here, but he's not sure which. He didn't miss train station crowds. He glimpses a flash of green hair the instant before she calls out, and he's almost surprised at how happy he is, even as he pushes through the throng to her side.

* * *

Her gown's sky-blue silk. Before she came in, he'd spotted a stain on his white dress shirt, but at the sight of her, he forgets about changing, about stifling collars and scratchy cufflinks and the royal birthday gala.

"You... look different," he manages.

"Is that good? Oh, your shirt!"

"I know..."

"You can hide it with your cravat." Her hair smells nice, he notices as she fusses with him. "There. Ready?”

"Almost. One last thing," he says, extracting a white blossom from the boutonniere he won't wear, and tucking it into her wavy, jade-green hair.

She wears it all evening.


	12. Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terra and Setzer

    Some nights, Terra comes on deck to test her Esper form.  She apologizes, as if she considers the sky his property, transforms, and takes flight, an erratic comet dazzling his eyes.  It takes him several nights to convince her she’s welcome, but her flights grow more frequent, and finally he challenges her to a race to test her wings.

    “I don’t have wings.”

    He draws near enough to touch her, to trace the lines of her shoulderblades.  Not quite an embrace.  “Right here,” he says.  “Of course you have wings.  So do I.”

    She wins, just like Daryl always did.


	13. Snowdrop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the FF Kiss Battle on Dreamwidth.

Celes knows she’s dreaming, because she’s no longer on the raft, alone between sea and sky.  Someone is at her side, and she can hear the crunch of snow underfoot, the soft sigh of wind between bare trees.  

They stop by a frozen pond; Shiva’s kiss feels like snowflakes on her lips, like cool, fresh water.   _You don’t need to melt,_ Shiva says.   _Some plants need cold to bloom._

“Teach me,” Celes says, but she says it out loud, the words harsh in her dry throat, too loud, and she wakes with only the kiss of snow on her lips.


	14. Eyes Open

When Terra kisses Kefka, it doesn’t look mechanical.  It looks for all the world like passion.  Kefka’s hand clutches her neck, and one open eye is on Celes.  She doesn’t want to look away, to let him win, but Terra makes a small sound in her throat and Celes has to be out of this room.

“Stop,” Kefka says, and Celes obeys, hand on the cold iron door.  

“Terra?  Kiss _her_.”  

Celes should stop this.  She doesn’t want to taste Kefka’s mouth on Terra’s lips.  But her eyes flutter shut, so that she can’t see that Terra’s eyes look dead.


	15. Vector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Druxy - Something which looks good on the outside, but is actually rotten inside.

Gestahl made the trains run on time, they’d say, half-mocking.  He was stern, but fair.  That, _clearly,_ was why officers of Gestahl’s military were in intense, cutthroat competition for an invitation onto the Blackjack, which became exempt from Gestahl’s laws against gambling as soon as it left the ground. 

Gestahl made the trains run on time, and his passion for order and punctuality was so profound that he needed to share it with all the world.  The southern continent was only the beginning, of that no one had any doubt.  That wasn’t even a rumor, just common knowledge.

When the wine flowed freely, Gestahl’s men talked about human experimentation, about mad scientists and mad generals and madness of all descriptions.  A broken chain of command, arbitrary orders, Gestahl sending orders halfway across the globe that no one dared dispute even though he had no idea of the situation on the ground. 

Vector was a miserable place to be.  Always drab, it now felt positively foreboding to Setzer.  It was clean, you could say that for it.  No beggars, no drunks in the gutters, no litter, no trace of poverty or decay; but no trace of happiness or even humanity, either.


	16. Rose and Release

            In this form, Terra’s more aggressive and more cautious at the same time.  She’ll kiss Celes first, claws combing through her hair, but otherwise barely touches Celes except with her mouth; lips at her throat, on her face, on the patch of skin bared where her shirt rides up, but never hands.  For Celes, it’s the reverse, her fingers stroking over Terra’s fur, tracing the points of velvet ears.  Only rarely does she press her lips against the coat of pink and white, or against Terra’s bared eyelids, the tip of her nose, or lightly and quickly on the lips.


End file.
